How to Partigyle Part 1 - A new series Two beers from one Mash.

Partigyle is an old techniqe that give
you multiple batches of beer from one
grist.   It maximizes production. 

Have you ever looked at a drained mash tun of high gravity wort, and thought to your self... "damn there is a lot of sugar and flavor left in there...."   You know it's in there, but most of the time you empty your mash tun into a bag and dutifully set it out for the trash pick up.   Well I am here to tell you... stop.   Don't throw away that high gravity grist.  Don't you dare.  There is so much sugar left in that high gravity grist, so much flavor left in that grist. Do what great brewers of yore did... partigyle your batch. The term Gyle is an old english term that brewers stole from malt vinnegar makers.   Hence the term you have a lot of guile (gyle). Guile is the French version, and when a wine went bad and became vinegar the French, in their normal sarcastic way, called it gyle...as in English Malt Vinegar. You see they had a similar word that meant witchcraft or sorcery... And they really like double entendre... So the term began to be known as trickery or deceit.  You can kinda see where they were coming from.  You open a bottle of wine after years... and it has turned to vinegar... that is deceitful...why not make fun of the English?   You wake up and realize it is Tuesday... why not make fun of the English....Enough history for today. In the production of malt vinnegar, gyling was the standard practice.  We have talked about partigyle before but, in a nut shell partigyling is getting more than one batch of beer out of one grist.  Partigyling was essential at one time to the production of porters.   And many craft breweries still make a 3 runnings gyle... Imperial Stout, Stout, and Brown (mild)  Three beers off of one grist.  Tell me that is not the ultimate in efficiency.  " Hey Bob What was your brew house efficiency today?  I don't know Ted around 130%..."   Of course I know that isn't really how you calculate... so take a breath... the point is there are great sugars left in the grains.  Why not use them?  Why not make more great beer?

photo credit lakelandbrewersguild.org

When ever we brew a high gravity batch of beer we like to partigyle the grist and get a second batch from the beer.  Even when we brew a medium high OG beer, we like to partigyle, and create yeast starter (more on this in another post).This Sunday will be  a great example.   We are brewing a 1.093 Stout as a no sparge batch of beer.   The pre boil gravity will be around 1.075.   When we brew a beer that big there is plenty of sugar still in there.  If we add 6.5 gallons of water to the grist and drain it.  We will have a 1.034 pre boil wort.   It will boil out to a 1.045-1.047 wort.  Perfect for a Brown Ale.  Yes, I know brown ales have fallen out of favor recently, but I for one still love the malty, slightly roasted flavor and aroma of a good brown ale.  In fact Brown ale is one of my favorite styles.  What is better than a quaffable crushable brown ale sitting by a fire pit on a crisp fall evening?

We will be documenting and shooting video of the process.  So make sure you check back.  And I will post the recipes over in the recipe area soon.   The key thing here is learning to plan a partigyle, and learning that a partigyle is not rocket science.   It is a tool you can incorporate to make more beer in less time. It does not double the length of your brew day if you have two heat sources capable of boiling wort.    And we do... In this case, it will only add about 30 minutes to our brew day.

We will also be teaching you some of the tricks we have learned along the way.  Tricks for adjusting color, flavor, and gravity.  Tricks for planning and timing.   It should be a lot of fun.

Here are some classic partigyle combinations.

Tripel and Blonde / Belgian Lager / Belgian Pale Ale
Belgian Blonde and Patersbier
Imperial Stout and Brown Ale  / Steam Beer / Black Lager
Stout and Mild / Amber Lager
Imperial IPA and Blonde Ale / Standard IPA / Premium Lager
Barleywine and Amber
English Barleywine and Irish Red
Wheat wine and any kind of sour / or wheaten saison
Normal Gravity IPA (1.060ish) and Yeast starter

This is an online partigyle calculator that we have found to be pretty accurate.
Make sure you use pre boil gravities. 

When you are planning a partigyle.   You need to get familiar with no sparge brewing.   You are not sparging.  Your sparge is your second gyle... your second runnings create a new batch of beer.  We have posted about it before.  And Don Osborn has a great video on it.   But when you partigyle I suggest that you do not do a mash out on the first gyle. You do not want to deactivate the enzymes.  You may need to add additional grains to the second gyle.   Of course you can always add DME or sugar to get to gravity.   But one of the tricks we will be showing you is how to adjust your color when you are doing a partigyle.   We will be showing you how to cap your mash with grain to get darker colors. Yes, you can make a wheat wine, followed by a amber harvest wheat.  We will be showing you how to plan your partigyle. We use a simple on line calculator.    But be warned.  You have to base things off of the wort gravity, not your final gravity. Above is an example for the up coming weekend.   Our Stout has a pre boil gravity of about 1.073.  1.092 post boil.   So by using the calculator, we know that the second runnings will have a gravity of about 1.0365... post boil of about 1.046.   Perfect.    We may have to cap the mash with additional grain to get the color we want.   And if we are a little low, we may have to add some base malt and let it sit for 30 minutes.   But believe me, that is not a problem on a two batch busy brew day.   Partigyle does take some planning regarding the water.   You will need to be heating 6.5 gallons of water to 150 F to 168 F while you are mashing.  And you probably can't use your existing burner to do it... so if you don't have two burners the ol' kitchen stove may be placed into action.  If you have two turkey fryers this won't be a problem at all.

The most effective partigyle procedure I have seen is kind of a hybrid technique.  We will display it for you on Sunday.  It is kind of a combination batch and fly sparge.  and it is really effective at rinsing out all of the sugars.   Basically you add enough water to slightly cover the grains and let them sit for 10 minutes.  Then you fly sparge to volume.   Believe me you will get the sugars out doing it this way.  By the way if you really know what you are doing with fly sparging,  You can just head straight into your gyle... well show you that in a couple of weeks.  And that is crazy fast way to partigyle.



So tune in early next week for an update on how to partigyle...

Hot Brewing action inside...10 gallon double batch... Weizenbock and Stout

Sunday was brew day.  We brew almost every weekend as a group, and I brew every week, either with the group or on my own.   But this Sunday was a process test.  Can we make 10 gallons of beer nearly simultaneously on two 5 gallon systems.  With 4 of us brewing, 10 gallons is a case of 12 ounce beers, or 12 bombers each.  By brewing 2 batches we can make 2 different styles, and increase variety.

The day was cold, the
mash was a challenge

The Oatmeal Stout mashing in
the electric brew kettle.

Sunday was our test run.  And to tell the truth, it went well.  My fledgling brew crew is turning into a semi experienced efficient team.  Everyone has certain skill sets and personality attributes that will make this a championship team in the future.

We brewed a weizenbock and an Oatmeal Stout. The weizenbock because Jake loves weizenbock, and the stout, because... St Patrick's day is coming.   The Stout was also a tribute to Alan Rickman... so we named it "Severus Stout, The Potions Master"    The weizenbock is called "Ill be bock"

Brewing 2 batches at the same time can be hectic.  But with a good team and good planning, you can pull it off.   Organization, and division of responsibility are the key to a 2 batch brew day.  So John and Jake handled the Weizenbock, and Mark and I handled the stout. Jake and Mark are both very precise people. John and I are both overview people.  We all love beer.  So great team.

Jake had to stir and
adjust the heat
constantly during mash, 
He is not smoking, that is
the thermometer cover.
Very sanitary Jake!

The mash for the stout was uneventful.  Mark took charge and kept the temperatures perfect.  The weizenbock was more challenging.  The weizenbock was brewed in the garage.  The temperature outside was 2 F.  Maintaining the mash temperature was nearly impossible, even with sleeping bags, and reflectix insulation.   (next time well be using a bag in a cooler, and doing a no sparge brew in a bag in a mash tun type of thing...got it?  good!)   A bag in a cooler will allow us to continue to crush fine, and gain the efficiency of BIAB, but keep more consistent mash temperatures on Jake's system. And it takes about the same time as BIAB, so it won't expand our brew day.

As it was, Jake had to work his but off to keep the mash going,  Stirring, and heating occasionally.   I'm sure it was the most frustrating mash of his young brewing career.   But he and John powered through and still produced a 1.074 Mash, expecting 1.080 so not too far off.  That is actually pretty good on a brew day where you can't keep the mash temperature consistent.  They were also mashing at a fairly high temperature to create more mouth feel.

You can see the amazing deep dark
brown color, almost black... yes I
know BJCP says Black... I dont
really care.  It's awesome. 

The stout on the other hand overshot.   Mark kept it at 154-156 for the entire mash, and we still overshot by .05 points.  Still with in tolerable limits.   I must admit I love the smell of stout mashing. The roasted grains create the most wonderful aroma.   Some people cap their mash with the roasted grains opting for less bitterness, and "toasty-ness" from the grains.  But I prefer to just use a little less and let all of those flavors mash away.   I think that makes my stouts a cool color, deep brown, almost black, and full flavored.   They can take some time to mellow, but I don't really mind the wait.

The boils were uneventful.  Both systems easily handled the volume being boiled.  The weizenbock finished it's boil about 12 minutes before the stout.  Not quite enough time to chill before the stout was finished but close enough.  Next time well space them out better.   The weizenbock was chilled with the stainless 25 lft chiller.   It chilled in about 18 minutes.   The stout was chilled with both chillers.  It chilled in about 12 minutes.   Love using both chillers. Using two coils chills so fast.    The simplest and most affordable way to chill rapidly is to use two 25 linear foot chillers.   Just expand one large enough to allow the other one to slide into it.   Make sure all of your clamps and hoses are tight.  Boom, instant turbo powered chilling.

Aeration with a mixing
paddle.

Jake and John are experimenting with a new way of aerating wort prior to yeast pitch.  New to us at least.  And it worked great.   They attached a mixing paddle to a drill.  The mixing paddle was sanitized, and used to aerate the wort.   The stout was aerated with our standard aquarium pump method.

John pitching a 1 liter starter of wheat beer yeast into the
weizenbock.  It really took off. 

John made a yeast starter for the weizenbock.   It is a 1.074 beer, so it was necessary to pitch a big healthy colony of yeast.  If you're not making yeast starters, give it a try it is actually really easy.  A cup of DME, 4.25 cups of water... some yeast... easy.  Of course you have to sanitize everything.  But you don't even need a stir plate.  I suggest watching the brewing tv video, and using brewunited.com yeast calculator.  Just make sure you tell it how you're making your starter...  And despite what you may have read you can use liquid or dry yeast.   We use both. But remember it is hard to get more than 300 Billion cells growth per liter, so you may need to do a step up.  Making a yeast starter has lots of great benefits; less chance of minor infection, cleaner beer with less esters and phenols, faster fermentation, and higher attenuation of the yeast.  We only needed 277 Billion cells so, no step up was needed.

We had the common sense to attach a blow off tube to the weizenbock.  Good thing we did.  John is fermenting it upstairs to keep it warmer than usual.  We want those wheat beer flavors... He reports full blow off, and bubbling so loud that it kept them awake at night.  Awesome...well awesome except for keeping John and Beth awake.

I think next time we do a double batch, we'll make 10 gallons of John's cream ale recipe. Brew on 2 systems and combine.  He calls for kolsch yeast, but you may want to try US05 for a crisper beer, or white labs cream ale blend. It is really excellent recipe.  UPDATE:  TRY K-97 for john's cream ale recipe.   He leaves out the rice... and after years of "barley, corn, rice... repeat" cream ale recipes, it is a really nice change.

That's all for now sports fans...

Prost!